DOES THIS JERSEY MAKE ME GAY?

I suppose it was inevitable that special Pride-themed jerseys will no longer be worn by NHL players. In many ways, it felt like a bold move to have hockey players wear them once a year during a game night warmup. The boldness came from the fact sporting environments are not known for being progressive in terms of LGBTQ acceptance. Locker rooms have long been places where homophobic remarks are frequently made and go unchecked. Being gay has been viewed as the antithesis of being a jock. When I was growing up, people perceived as gay were often called sissies and one major criterion for being perceived as gay was being bad at sports. Homophobia has also been a contributing factor to unfiltered locker room chatter that objectifies women and goes into lurid details about sexual escapades with them. If you didn’t join in, you risked standing out for the “wrong” reasons. What are you…gay? 

 

Still, star athletes are often viewed by large swaths of the public as heroes and role models. This has always seemed like sheer folly to me. Using a stick to swat a puck in a net or to send a ball over the fence means you may have the right skills to compete at a high level in games. It doesn’t mean your thoughts about social justice, climate change or the upcoming “Barbie” movie should be held in high regard. But, in this society, they often are. That’s why it mattered when an entire hockey team did its pre-game skate in shirts with little rainbow icons. Sidney Crosby’s wearing it! Gee, maybe gay’s okay.

 

Obviously, it’s not that simple. Changing long-held views takes time. For many, it’s hard to accept differences when their social and work worlds have little or no representation of those differences. Parts of society continue to be segregated, no longer by legal barriers, but by personal assessments of the need to feel and belong. Sidney Crosby needs to wear that colorful jersey next year and the year after that. That makes it less of a “stunt” and more of an ongoing tradition. Conservatives are big on tradition.

 

While professional teams play in big cities which tend to be more diversely populated and, consequently, more accepting, the games are watched by fans throughout the host state. It’s something to do. (For example, I became a regular watcher of Vancouver Canuck games when I moved to a rural area of BC. Back in Vancouver, I haven’t watched at all.) This is especially important because there are NHL teams in many red states and swing states.

Dallas Stars…Texas

Carolina Hurricanes…North Carolina

Columbus Blue Jackets…Ohio 

Nashville Predators…Tennessee

Vegas Golden Knights…Nevada

Tampa Bay Lightning…Florida

Florida Panthers

Arizona Coyotes

 

That's right, Bud Light.
Deal with it.

An entire hockey squad wearing rainbows, even for a few minutes once a year during the opening skate while bros in man caves crack a beer and rip open a bag of chips, can have an impact. Given that friendship circles, Twitter followers and chosen “news” outlets may fully align with a particular way of thinking, that warmup may be the only exposure to a message that gay is okay.

 

Brendan Burke with his dad.

One of the big forces giving rise to Pride nights is the organization You Can Play which formally came to be in March 2012 as a tribute legacy to Brendan Burke, after he died in a car accident at the age of 21 in 2010. Brendan was the son of NHL coach Brian Burke and was openly gay as a student manager of a hockey team at Ohio’s Miami University. It’s telling as to how rare the intersection of homosexuality and pro hockey were that Brendan got airtime in 2009 on a Canadian sports TV station during a game intermission. Sure, his dad was a big-time name in pro hockey but Brendan wasn’t. The gay son of an NHL coach made news because Brendan was “the closest person to the NHL ever to come out publicly and say that he is gay.” Good on Brendan but a sad statement on professional hockey.

 

After Brendan’s more public coming out, his brother, Patrick, said, “I waited to get a negative email, or to read a damning article, or to hear a snide comment at a game. I waited, and I waited, and I waited ... and I got what I should have expected the entire time: love, support, and admiration.” Ain’t that nice? That was then.

  

In 2013, the Florida Panthers were the first NHL team to have a Pride night. Every team now has a Pride night, but some such events haven’t included players wearing special Pride jerseys which are later auctioned off for charity. Various teams in the league have other themed nights to raise awareness about cancer and to honor people in the military. Hosting a Pride night and wearing these special shirts were good PR until they weren’t.

 

Times have changed. I go back to Patrick’s quote as he braced for hate when his brother came out. It didn’t happen. There were, of course, people who would not have accepted Brendan Burke as a gay man but, even as marriage equality was still playing out, they had the sense to keep their opinions to themselves or to their circle of people who thought like they did.

 

There have long been places for hating on gays and it took on an air of legitimacy with people like Rush Limbaugh having a platform but hate as a rallying cry and as a means to counter political criticism became an arena sport once Trump launched his first presidential campaign. Politics became an alt version of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). 

 

“BUILD THAT WALL!” 

“LOCK HER UP!”

 

By golly, you could become a full-fledged club member by purchasing a special red baseball cap. 

 

No healthcare platform? So what. BOOORRRING!  

 

LGBTQ haters are emboldened once again due, in part, to Republican efforts, especially at the state level, to make LGBTQ issues a threat to families. We’re a threat again. We’re sinners and perverts. 

 

Our rights are under attack once again because it’s politically expedient. The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade so there needs to be another ticket item to drum up donations and get people worked up enough to cast votes. Hate on gays—and especially on people who identify as trans—is a no-brainer. 

 

Men in dresses who read picture books will make your kids gay!

Bearded dudes who say they’re trans will check out your wives in women’s restrooms!

Muscled teen boys will take all the blue ribbons meant for your daughters at the local track meet!

 

These fear-based laws are easier to push through Republican-majority legislatures than figuring out how to bring new jobs to the state, deciding what to do about people addicted to Fentanyl or coming up with more funds for maintaining state highways when you’ve promised tax cuts.

 

Yes, professional jocks going for a little skate while wearing rainbows is the right kind of messaging to hit home. 

 

But that’s over. A handful of NHL players refused to wear the jerseys. Some Russian players asserted it would be viewed as a political statement back home, making things difficult for family members there. Non-Russians went with the position that the colorful shirts ran counter to their religious beliefs. I’m going to give these players the benefit of the doubt and assume they were one hundred percent sincere. Free speech, freedom of religion…I’m fine with that. Nobody is 100% liked. Someone probably disliked Betty White. 

 

Here's where it gets tricky. Is the annual pregame skate tarnished by the fact one or two players opt out and stay in the locker room? Does it have to be all or nothing?

 

I would say that having 95% of a pro hockey team that plays in Florida put on a Pride jersey is a very strong statement. Cue Lady Gaga: applause, applause. If we say it was okay for Colin Kaepernick to take a knee during the national anthem—a far bolder act occurring since it involved one of America’s most patriotic rituals—it’s okay for Eric Staal or brother Marc to be out of sight during a game warmup.

 

The focus on the exception rather than the overwhelming majority created snappy online news stories and allowed for Twitter rants spewing hate about homophobic players who refused to come out…of the locker room. Suddenly, a lot of people who think like me had tweets to “like” and retweet. Hate shows up on both sides. 

 

Again, 95% of a group of professional jocks slipped on a shirt that said, in hockey, You Can Play. As another Pride Night slogan says, Hockey Is For Everyone. That’s big in a league that has yet to have a single openly gay player play a single game. (Luke Prokop came out in 2021. He was drafted by the Nashville Predators but thus far has only played for farm clubs of the Western Hockey League.) The Pride jersey photo op is good for fans and it’s good for closeted players who may inch closer to coming out, if not in the press, then at least to one or two teammates, perhaps eventually to the whole squad. That can do wonders for their mental health.

 

Unfortunately, the flak from a few players bowing out of the colorful pre-game fashion show made NHL bigwigs antsy. What began as good PR was turning into bad PR. It highlighted the problem that the league has had all along: despite “You Can Play” and “Hockey Is For Everyone,” the organization couldn’t hold up a single Duck, Shark or Flame as a gay spokesperson. Gay Penguins were for picture books, gay Stars for Ryan Murphy productions. Jersey nights were window dressing without any substance behind it. Was the possible homophobia of a few players the truer character of the league?

 

And so it ended. No more jersey nights. Not for Pride nor for military appreciation nor for cancer. Rather than staying strong behind a display of near-total solidarity in wearing flashy jerseys that meant something, NHL owners threw in the towel. When something’s easy, all aboard. When a few dissidents created a little heat, there wasn’t enough conviction to take a strong stand. The cause isn’t important enough. As NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said, “[I]t’s become a distraction.” Pride nights can continue but NHL players won’t be part of it. 

 

Huh. 

 

Feels like getting hit in the mouth with a puck. What’s left is a toothless expression. 

__________

        [To read You Can Play's response to the cancellation of 

        jersey nights, click here.]

AND TANGO MAKES THREE

Written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

 

Illustrated by Henry Cole

 

(Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2005)

 

Almost two decades ago, penguins were having a moment. “Trending,” we would say today. In 2005, the $8-million documentary, “March of the Penguins” grossed $127 million at the box office. “Happy Feet,” an animated feature, followed in 2006, with a risky budget of $100 million. Happy ending: it took in $384 million. 

 

Preceding these was a 2004 article in The New York Times, “Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name,” featuring Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins in the Central Park Zoo, described as “completely devoted to each other.” The article noted that Roy and Silo were not a zoo penguin anomaly. “Before them, the Central Park Zoo had Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who tried to incubate eggs together. And Wendell and Cass, a devoted male African penguin pair, live at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island.” There were more scientific revelations, including reference to a book that noted homosexual behaviour in 450 species. 

 

Interesting. But let’s get back to penguins and that Central Park pair, Roy and Silo. In 2005, they starred in the nonfiction picture book, And Tango Makes Three. Book shelf lives are short and this penguin title would have gone the way of the dodo by now but for book bannings and missions to remove certain content from elementary school libraries. On the positive side, it also gets a mention every June during Pride month when publications put out lists of gay books. I finally decided to browse the book myself.

 

Opus in a fruity hat...

did that ruffle tail feathers?

My first impression was neither a sense of shock nor pride at the suggestion of gay penguins. (Note: “gay” is never used in the book.) Instead, I was aghast that Roy and Silo would be held up as gay icons of the animal world. I am no penguin aficionado—in fact, I’ve never seen either of the box office hit movies I mentioned in the first paragraph. Perhaps penguins are true “bird brains” in the sense they’re not all that bright. My favorite penguin is Opus, a clever, amusing comic strip creation of Pulitzer Prize-winner Berkeley Breathed, appearing in the classic syndicated titles “Bloom County,” “Outland” and, at long last, just “Opus.” Neither Roy nor Silo would be able to match wits with Opus. As the book explains, the pair gathered stones, as penguins do, to make a nest. With the nest in place, “[e]very night Roy and Silo slept there together, just like the other penguin couples.” In time, they realized that the mama penguins perched on the other nests had each laid an egg.

 

It gets embarrassing. “Roy and Silo had no egg to sit on and keep warm. They had no baby chick to feed and cuddle and love. Their nest was nice, but it was a little empty.” Hoo boy. Good thing they’re cute in their little tuxedos. Let’s not make them grand marshals at any Pride parade. 

 

The rock that would not hatch.

It gets more embarrassing. “One day Roy found something that looked like what the other penguins were hatching and he brought it to their nest. It was a rock”—um, kinda like the stones that made the nest?—“but Silo carefully sat on it. And sat…” The two took turns sitting on the rock. SPOILER ALERT: “But nothing happened.”

 

Really, book banners, is this a story you want to keep away from impressionable young children? If you’re homophobic, it seems this book may even help your cause. Being gay makes you dumb. Maybe conservative media would run with it, appearing on Fox News with the news banner, “Homosexuality kills brain cells.” 

 

I don’t know. Far be it for me to offer fuel to enemy lines.

 

I suppose when you’re singularly focused on “gay is bad” you don’t bother with nuances or any sort of critical thinking. The book explains that Roy and Silo are “boys” (forgoing males since that term may be too sophisticated for its targeted readers) and “they did everything together.” Everything includes bowing, singing, walking and swimming. 

 

Again, I’m feeling neither proud nor scandalized.

 

At any rate, on to the smut…

 

Penguins necking

Maybe all hell broke loose though when Roy and Silo “wound their necks around each other.” To be clear, neither hugging nor kissing is mentioned. Certain adults might read all sorts of lascivious behavior into that, but a kid (whose development understands “boys” but not “males”) is going to think that’s the equivalent of joshing, play-fighting or putting their arms around one another. This is what primary students do. Who’s taking this to supposedly taboo terrain? I suppose it’s the one human character in the book, Mr. Gramzay, a zookeeper, who must finally make book banners rabid, when he “thought to himself, ‘They must be in love.’” Sounds sweet to me. 

 

Typical young girl reaction: “Ahhhh” because any mention of love elicits that. Typical boy reaction: “Ewwww” because any reference to love is gross. This isn’t a knee-jerk homophobic response. Young boys are socialized to think lovey-dovey stuff is icky. 

 

I’m having a moment, wondering how many book banners might be more like Silo and Roy than they’d like to believe, someday being reincarnated as penguins who would wait for their own rocks to hatch. Naturally, they’d dismiss the absurdity and heresy of such speculation since reincarnation is not a Christian concept. But I’m still wondering.

 

A Pro Life moment, lost on rabid banners.

Eventually, Gramzay finds an egg that needs tending and sets it in Roy and Silo’s nest. They’d done such a good job of tending to a rock, after all. (Kudos, guys! It didn’t roll away!) Unlike the rock, the egg hatches. Gramzay calls the chick Tango, reasoning, “because it takes two to make a Tango.” Most primary kids won’t know that a tango is a dance so, whoever is reading to them can explain this. I suspect kids will just be happy that the baby was born. If anything, they’ll wonder why the egg came up as a spare during nesting season. The author’s note at the back of the book tells readers that the egg was one of two belonging to penguins Betty and Porkey, but that pair had never been able to care for two at once so, basically, one of the eggs would need to be tended to by other penguins to hatch. Seems like an above and beyond pro-life effort the book banners could have spun, but winding necks and loving “boy” penguins had already been duly offensive.

 

I'd forgotten the mention of "two daddies." 

In the two decades since,it doesn't seem to 

have radically altered the penguin world.

I’m sorry, it seems preposterously silly to get stirred up over this book and to seek to keep it away from children. There is no doubt that banning efforts have led to more young and older readers reading this book than would ever have been imaginable. For young penguin lovers—and, relax, easily triggered conservatives, I’m speaking generally of affection, not bestiality; what makes people’s minds go to such places anyway?—I’d recommend the picture books 365 Penguins, wherein a growing domesticated colony is content to be stashed in filing cabinets or stacked as pyramids, and Penguin and Pinecone, about another dopey main character who befriends, yes, a pinecone. It’s a super cute story, at least. (Where are the activists seeking smarter portrayals of penguins in children’s lit?) 

 

Personally, I’m not giving the Tango book another thought. I’d rather spend twenty minutes reading old “Bloom County” comics, smiling over Opus and saving any offense for the antics of Bill the Cat. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m setting out to do…

 

 

     

GETTING CAMPY

My boyfriend grew up in Colorado and, like me, feels a special connection with nature. Whereas my childhood included going each summer to the family cottage on a river in Ontario, Evan’s involved regular treks to a family cabin in a wooded area in the mountains. But Evan’s experiences communing with nature go deeper. He got a taste of camping in university and then, after moving to Seattle, started to think about being a camper again.

 

When Evan considers adding something to his life, he’s intense. He studies the subject and stocks up with all the necessities. Because he’s an architect and designer, he’s highly visual and he strives for an aesthetic. In terms of camping, that doesn’t mean chandeliers and roasted duck, glamping options I mentioned in my last post. Too much glam, too little camp. Instead, he takes the essentials and bumps them up. He strives to make camping possibly comfier but positively prettier. 

 

In my fifty-eight years of living, I’ve steered clear of camping. The closest I’ve come is ninety minutes in a tent in my back yard at nine years old before missing a real mattress and several years of unrolling my sleeping bag in barebones cabins while chaperoning seventh-grade trips.

 

In our first year together, I’d managed to avoid becoming camp acculturated. He was thrilled that I loved hiking as much (or more) than him. We hiked aplenty. We stayed in funky Airbnb cabins or basic motels in remote places after hiking days that involved long drives. We could ooh and aah on trails, silently listening for the call of an eagle, the whistle of a marmot or, more troubling, the grunts and growls of a black bear, then wash the mud and pine needles off in a long, hot shower before noshing on bad restaurant fare from bland Nepali to “motel Mexican.” I also expanded my nature experiences, spending two separate weeks at Evan’s Airstream in New Mexico, not just surviving but thriving. With nightly fires and peeing amongst the sagebrush—or, better yet, driving into town to use the facilities at the gym—I figured I’d proven myself as being a guy who could occasionally veer from pampered city life. 

 

But then Evan raised the stakes. Perhaps I’d been too adaptable. A few months ago, he started talking about full-on camping, with words like “tent” and “frostbite” popping up too often. I listened politely. Hypothermia was still only hypothetical.

 

Things started to feel real when we browsed our cities’ respective yuppy sporting goods stores, REI in Seattle and MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) in Vancouver. At MEC, I even bought “Moon Cheese Gouda” and “Kathmandu Curry,” both in flat, airtight packages that felt super light, highly practical for a long backpacking trek, but defying any common sense thinking about food that quells hunger pangs. (I sensed that satisfying the palate was not even a consideration.)

 

Once camping season kicked off—when exactly, I’m not sure; perhaps when we had three consecutive days without rain—camp talk got more intense. It sounded like the goal was to camp as much as possible, maybe even every weekend. I started to worry. After all, my time as a Boy Scout involved sitting in a school gym once a week while browsing through the manual at home with me dreaming about, then prioritizing all the cute badges I’d get. After a couple of months, I became a Boy Scout dropout. Badge count: zero.

 

There’s also the fact I can’t light a fire. It’s a fear I have that started when I got an owie from holding a sparkler when I was four. Camping prospects: negative twenty-five.

 

I should mention I’m a horrible sleeper. As a teen, I was gifted at slumber, turning my bedroom into a cave, the windowlight blocked by mounds of dirty laundry resting on a weight bench I used maybe three times. On weekends, I’d awaken for the last half hour of morning at best. But shortly after entering the workforce full-time, I lost my ability to sleep soundly. Even now, on disability without a real job, I’m unable to nap—ever!—and sleep time comes with a sense of agony, lots of staring at the clock and then, whenever I do nod off, stressful dreams that leave me feeling exhausted once I jolt myself awake. Surely, sleeping on the ground would prove more challenging as I worried about snakes and bugs crawling into my sleeping bag, bears seeking a late-night din-din—more than moon cheese—and whether the evening fire was really totally out. 

 

As luck would have it, camping is a religion for tons of people in British Columbia and Washington. There’s a date provincial and state parks set for opening up the year’s online bookings and people awaken at 5 or 6 a.m., competing to reserve as many camp weekends as possible for the privilege of doing body scans for tics, peeing behind pines and presumably holding one’s poop until accessing a sketchy gas station restroom on the way back home. Apparently, we missed the big day. Everything was booked. Shucks.

 

As a “consolation,” I booked us a weekend in Victoria, staying in a glorious old home with a view of a real castle basically in our back yard. We went to New York City and took in the Karl Lagerfeld exhibit at The Met. Life remained perfectly civilized.

 

Still, Evan’s voice got edgier as he continued to mention weekends of yesteryear in the woods and cursed “tech bros” who’d possibly used some algorithm to overwhelm camping reservation systems. Conspiracy! (Turns out they’re not all bad.) I brightly suggested hiking in Whistler, booking two nights at my favorite hotel with a pool, sauna and a cute alien stuffie, available for purchase, on the generously pillowed bed. He didn’t even hear me.

 

And then it happened. Evan announced, “I found a site!” His best friend was all in. I needed to appear equally eager. Whidbey Island, here we come. 

 

Yippee. (Notice the pointed lack of an exclamation mark.)

 

In the week leading up to my Intro to Camping, I checked the weather forecast multiple times each day. Friday called for rain. Great. We’d have to set up our tent on soggy soil. Would it soak through my sleeping bag? Evan mentioned liners and bought me a mattress pad that was something between a yoga mat and an air mattress. Would that lessen the jabs of pinecones and rocks as I feigned sleeping? By Wednesday night, Evan’s best friend bailed. Wise man, opting to stay home and shop Amazon for frankincense and myrrh. (What are they anyway?)

 

As I got ready on Friday morning fretting over the impression I’d make by showing up with a rolling carry-on instead of a smartly packed backpack, Evan started texting me nearby hotel options. This was clearly a trap. My reply: “No. Let’s camp!” 

 

Passed test. Failed seizure of opportunity.

 

It wasn’t until I’d crossed the U.S. border and ordered an especially chichi iced coffee (“black cherry and mint mojito”)—last taste of civilization—that I saw a forwarded email for a one-night reservation at a hokey, Dutch-style hotel, complete with fake windmill, along the busy island highway. 

 

Heaven!

 

That night we set up the tent—I even proved somewhat helpful—and then headed for the hotel, walking across the parking lot to eat dinner at a Dutch restaurant that specialized Mexican food. I ordered the berry waffle. When things seem awry, go with it, right? 

 

In the morning, Evan donned a camp-worthy shirt—"shadow plaid,” he told me—while I wore a weather-inappropriate but thematically on point forest green t-shirt with a silhouette of trees across the chest. We spent much of a cloudy, chilly Saturday checking out murals—Aren’t walls glorious?—and getting oat milk lattes in Oak Harbor before making our way to Coupeville for antiquing, book browsing and cider tasting. Camping rocks!

 

Alas, no more rain meant no more delays. We drove to the campsite and I ran forest trails while Evan used his camping gear—a burner and fancy pot—to whip up wild rice and quinoa with aged cheddar, tomatoes and fresh basil. As an appie, I opened the moon cheese. One nugget was more than enough for me, but Evan made a big deal of downing a handful, pretending the not-so-subtle hints of salt and cardboard meshed perfectly to smack of real gouda. (He’d make a good vegan.) His meal was super tasty and admittedly better than the package of Norwegian crackers I’d stashed in the trunk of my car in case the weekend turned into a smorgasbord of dehydrated astronaut bites.

 

We wandered to an ocean bluff to sip wine and watch the sunset as a lone deer grazed nearby, oblivious to us, only hightailing it when a family showed up, the children’s urge to get closer and closer leading to inevitable disappointment. But that’s part of camping, too. As idyllic as the setting was, there was plenty of excited kiddie chatter piercing through the forest as they ran about hiding and seeking, brandishing sticks and staking claim as humans do. On several occasions, I heard one child say to another, “What are you doing on my campsite?” 

 

It wasn’t just the young ’uns who shattered serenity. Men with RVs, bushy beards, and bulging bellies bellowed boisterously, fulfilling some need that seemed to say, “Hear me roar!” I realized that hikers and campers may both claim to love nature, but the hiker soaks in the quiet, listening for the squeak of a pika, while a camper dude wants to crank up the tunes, down a few brewskis and let Mother Nature know Bubba Was Here, hopefully without carving it into a tree trunk.

 

No matter. Evan and I enjoyed our time together, ending the day by a fire which I, of course, had no part in lighting or stoking. Eventually, we crawled into the tent, slipped into our sleeping bags and nodded off, my sleep no better but no worse than at home or in a janky knockoff of a Dutch hotel. 

 

I did it! 

 

Not only did I survive, but I was a happy camper. A single night was perfect. I could cross it off my bucket list…after after-the-fact adding it. I came. I saw. I camped.

 

Two days later, Evan back in Seattle and me in Vancouver, I searched online and found an available campsite for mid-October along B.C.’s scenic Howe Sound. I called Evan and mentioned it out loud. We talked about how cold and rainy it could be that time of year. We also noted how autumn sometimes included moments of unseasonable warmth. Too much of a gamble. I booked it anyway.  

 

Good god, is this the start of something? 

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A GLAMOROUS GAY CAMP...

Somewhere in the state of Washington, possibly near Seattle, there’s supposedly a campground specifically for gays. Take a moment to make your own mental picture of how it might be. I’ll wait. I’ll Goodle “paddle boarding why” and listen to Omar Apollo’s devastating gay breakup song yet again which opens with a perfectly in tune gay question, “Was there something wrong with my body?” Sing it, Omar!

 

Okay, got your gay campground mental picture? Let’s compare it with my perceptions. When I first heard Vancouverites talk about it twenty-five years ago, chandeliers seemed to really stand out in the conversation. Inside the tent? Hanging from a Sitka spruce? Can an ornate light fixture run on batteries? How long of an electrical cord was needed? It sounded elegant, over the top…and I couldn’t summon an image of me being there that didn’t involve tripping over that dang cord. Lights out, everybody. 

 

That seemed more worrisome than the possibility of tics and Lyme disease. After all, I’d also heard this campground was an extremely social community. If I kept messing with the chandelier’s power—there couldn’t possibly be more than one, could there?—I’d surely be shunned…even sooner than usual! 

 

What was wrong with flashlights anyway? 

 

Didn’t we all play flashlight tag as kids? Why do we give up all the fun stuff?

 

In this gay camp area, I’d heard there was an element of one-upmanship. (Really, how gay is that?!) Meals had to be Instagram-worthy, even if social media wasn’t a thing back then. Forget hot dogs and smores over a bonfire. Someone would roast a turkey while the competition—er, neighbors—would use their firepit to make a retro meal of duck à l’orange and the meringue for baked Alaska (What says “camping” more than a dish with “Alaska” in its name?). (The ice cream would be made from scratch, of course. Vanilla would be too, well, vanilla. Something involving fancy liqueurs.) I don’t know if there is a way to eliminate any chance of salmonella when cooking turkey or duck by campfire, but surely the flavors would make any possibility of diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps worth it. (Add an extra roll of 3-ply Charmin to the backpack.) 

 

The impression I got was that a chance spotting of a Northern Spotted Owl or a bleeding tooth fungus was incidental to a glamorous party weekend in the woods. I suspected site regulars spent rainy Pacific Northwest winters drawing up tent layouts and contemplating how to adapt Martha Stewart “good things” for the forest. Anything with a truly natural pine set would be oh so cliché. The main objective seemed to be that all things pretentious had to come off as easy-peasy: “Oh, we do this sort of thing all the time.”

 

Apparently, there were other over-the-top aspects regarding outfits and sex antics, but I was hung up on proper lighting and fiddly meringue.

 

Everything I’d ever heard about camping was intimidating: bears, rattlesnakes, murderers lurking in the woods and, added to the mix…meal planning.

 

Yikes. And, yuck.

 

Needless to say, I began to tune out whenever this mythical rural legend of a glam-gay campground[1] came up in conversation once every five years or so. Real or not, I would never go. It sounded like an awful lot of work when I could just rent a cabin or, better yet, day hike and unwind in a Jacuzzi tub at a Hilton or even crash on a basic mattress at Motel 6. Camping is not my thing. It's one of those things I've told myself I would never do. 

 

No regrets.

But now things have changed...

---

[1] All this initial talk of a glamorous gay campground preceded the coining of the term, glamping, which didn’t occur until 2005, being added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Last October, I changed this blog’s name to “Aging Gayly.” I realized the other day that I haven’t written anything since then that has been directly about getting older although references to Barry White, Karen Carpenter, Flip Wilson and Bette Midler may be dead giveaways. I don’t think I ever really left the ’70s. 

 

Sigh. Keep going...

keep going.

There are reminders that I’m no spring chicken everywhere. One of the worst comes when I’m filling out something online, perhaps purchasing an airline ticket, and I have to enter my date of birth. For “convenience,” the numbers for month, day and year are scroll-down options. It takes a helluva lot of scrolling to get to my year. Entering the four digits would be both quicker and less humbling.  

 

It's hard to believe I once struggled with accepting the term, middle-aged. It made me cringe. It brought to mind synonyms from my very own personalized thesaurus: passé, irrelevant, recalcitrant, rotting. Hello, regular references to nostalgia: answering machines, Blockbusters, “Designing Women,” Tang, Milli Vanilli, magazine subscriptions.

 

“Middle-aged” is way, way back in the rearview mirror unless I’m kidding myself into thinking I’m going to live to 116 (Go, science!). Do I really want to be that guy they wheel into the nursing home dining room, sitting deaf and oblivious in a wheelchair as they set a birthday cake in front of me when I haven’t eaten solids in a decade and gathering three or four staff members for a photo no one wants, then clapping as they pretend I’m the one who blew out the one candle they lit? I’d probably nod off before they even tracked down Jerry the custodian to borrow his lighter.

 

Yeah. There could be darker times ahead. 

 

I’m thankful I’m still spry and aware enough to want to spit at anyone who puts “spry” and my name in the same sentence. Soon enough, I’ll be able to look people in the eye, say the f-word and have people think it’s cute. Hilarious even. When I glare and repeat the f-word, they’ll only laugh harder. 

 

But I keep telling myself that’s far away. Middle-aged is gone but lopping off “middle” and just being aged doesn’t seem the right fit either. I continue to jog and ride my bike…a regular bike with no “e” in front of it. Then I’m reminded my bike just hit its thirtieth anniversary. I’m old-ish with old things. I try not to get hung up on that. I frequently pass people younger than my bike. Spry, indeed!

 

I’d like to believe I’m a generation away (or more, fingers crossed) from regularly reading obituaries and having funerals be my social scene. (“Finger sandwiches? Sheesh. They had a whole pasta bar at Lou’s.”) I hope to never be that person in line at a café who turns to a stranger and says, “All my friends are dead.” Let “good morning” roll off the tongue instead or, better yet, let there be no f-ing line. 

 

My closest friend and I have talked about a time when we’ll text each other every morning, the hello or “Damn. Outta prunes. Again” serving as a means of checking in on one another, talk of our lack of constipation a more polite message than, “You’re not dead, are you?” We don’t text much as of now. Mostly, it’s out-dueling one another to announce a dead celebrity. Ed Asner. Betty White. Tina Turner. People I “loved” inasmuch as you can adore a person you never met who nonetheless brought joy. It’s always a macabre exchange, each of us offering something dignified and mentioning a favorite role/show/song. It will only become more macabre when more of the famous dead people are in our same decade or, gasp, the one that comes after us. Live long and prosper, Rob Lowe, Lisa Kudrow and Debbie Gibson. Each of you looks far younger than your years. Let that stand…for you and, ahem, for me, too.

 

Age is just a number, they say, but my how it’s getting big. “F that.” [Insert laughtrack. (Yep. I still remember what that is.)]